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Opinion: Like it or not, Donovan's time had come

By Sean Sweeney, Correspondent

Updated:
05/24/2014 06:50:00 AM EDT

Landon Donovan, front left, celebrates with United States teammates Clint Dempsey, back left, and Edson Buddle after scoring a goal in stoppage time against Algeria during the 2010 World Cup on June 23, 2010, in Pretoria, South Africa. Donovan won't be going to his fourth World Cup after being cut from the team on Thursday. AP PHOTO

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The death knell for Landon Donovan sounded shortly before 6 p.m. Thursday, a cacophony of "Oh no's" and adverse shock rippling across Twitter. It was announced

that the Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder won't be going to Brazil with the United States men's national team.

There are many who believe that head coach Jurgen Klinsmann is wrong to leave off Donovan -- the hero of two of his three World Cups -- from the 23-man squad that takes on Ghana, Portugal and Germany in Group G play some three weeks from now.

I say nay, nay. I tell you as you enjoy your coffee and Cocoa Puffs on this Saturday morning that there is nothing wrong with what Klinsmann did Thursday.

There is no denying that Donovan has been the face of U.S. football for the past decade and a half. Donovan saved our bacon in 2010, triggering a comeback against Slovenia with a well-placed, 48th-minute strike that nearly took the goalkeeper's head off, and then punched in the lone goal in second-half stoppage time against Algeria. His level of play on the national side has been incredible -- but not for the last two years, ever since he stepped away from the sport before the USA began its 2014 qualifying run.

Was Donovan's sabbatical ill-timed? I think it was. You do not step away from the sport -- especially this sport -- and expect to keep your spot in the national side. There is also the fact that Donovan is now 32 -- relatively ancient in football -- and this is usually about the time that players bow out from the international stage.

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We all knew that this would have been L.D.'s final World Cup anyway -- remember that David Beckham blew out his Achillies at 34 in 2009 as he tried to go for England's 2010 World Cup side. Inevitably, the torch of American leadership would have been passed after Brazil.

What Klinsmann did Thursday is not a bad thing. Including Donovan in the United States' World Cup squad at this juncture would have held the team back in its development. Sure, the United States is one of the top two footballing nations in CONCACAF, with Mexico. The United States can compete with European and South American sides, and it showed it in friendlies over the course of the last qualifying cycle.

But the point of the World Cup, and competing at the World Cup, is to beat -- and to do it regularly -- the best nations in football. Landon Donovan's time at trying to do that is over, and if the United States wants to be the best in this sport, it has to develop. You do not grow as a footballing nation by being sentimental. You grow as a footballing nation with what Klinsmann did Thursday afternoon.

As for looking ahead to 2018: The positive side of me hopes the U.S. can get out of the Group of Death, and even if we do somehow survive Ghana, Portugal and Germany, we have to be practical, much like Klinsmann has said in interviews since the middle of the Hexagonal in 2013 -- the United States is far from winning the World Cup, and he is right. Consider the 2014 World Cup to be an experiment, of sorts: It takes more than one round of camps to develop a national team into a world powerhouse. By bleeding young players such as Julian Green, Graham Zusi and Chris Wondolowski against the best team in Africa and two of the best -- and if not two of the best, definitely two of the most dangerous -- footballing nations in Europe, we'll get to see how much work Klinsmann has to do in his continuing development of the squad by the time qualifying for 2018 begins.

If anything, Donovan's omission from the squad should be a wake-up call to the other members of the United States men's national team. Klinsmann is, in essence, telling these players that the time is now, to prove you belong with the best in world football. It is now time for Jozy Altidore to rise to his potential and surpass it. It is now time for Clint Dempsey to return to his gunslinging ways when he was with Fulham (he's kinda lost that since he went to Tottenham and now back to MLS and Seattle). It is now time for Michael Bradley to take that captain's armband and control the center of the park.

And it's now time to pass the torch on to the next face of American soccer.

This is not an obituary on Landon Donovan's career: He'll continue with the Galaxy until he is pulled back to being a last 20- or 30-minute player, then he'll retire with the professional grace and humility that he has always shown. But his time with the national team truly ended when he pounded in Dempsey's rebound against the Algerians in 2010.

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